bed at it!

"Mother went home--and inside.

"Father was good at bees--could manage them like sheep when he got to
know their ideas. When the swarm settled, he sent us for the old washing
stool, boxes, bags, and so on; and the whole time he was fixing the bees
I noticed that whenever his back was turned to us his shoulders would
jerk up as if he was cold, and he seemed to shudder from inside, and now
and then I'd hear a grunting sort of whimper like a boy that was
just starting to blubber. But father wasn't weeping, and bees weren't
stinging him; it was the bee that stung mother that was tickling father.
When he went into the house, mother's other eye had bunged for sympathy.
Father was always gentle and kind in sickness, and he bathed mother's
eyes and rubbed mud on, but every now and then he'd catch inside, and
jerk and shudder, and grunt and cough. Mother got wild, but presently
the humour of it struck her, and she had to laugh, and a rum laugh it
was, with both eyes bunged up. Then she got hysterical, and started to
cry, and father put his arm round her shoulder and ordered us out of the
house.

"They were very fond of each other, the old people were, under it
all--right up to the end.... Ah, well!"

Mitchell pulled the swags out of a bunk, and started to fasten the
nose-bags on.

Andy Page's Rival

Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
That was the picture of Andy--
Middleton's rouseabout.
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stock-whip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions------

And he hadn't any "ideers"--at least, he said so himself--except
as regarded anything that looked to him like what he called "funny
business", under which heading he catalogued tyranny, treachery,
interference with the liberty of the subject by the subject, "blanky"
lies, or swindles--all things, in short, that seemed to his slow
understanding dishonest, mean or paltry; most especially, and above all,
treachery to a mate. THAT he could never forget. Andy was uncomfortably
"straight". His mind worked slowly and his decisions were, as a rule,
right and just; and when he once came to a conclusion concerning any
man or matter, or decided upon a course of action, nothing short of an
earthquake or a Nevertire cyclone could move him back an inch--unless a
conviction were severely shaken, and then he would require as much time
to "back" to his starting point as he did to come to the